Two teens drown off Mumbai’s Juhu Beach

MUMBAI - Two teenagers drowned off Mumbai’s Juhu beach during high tide.

The victims, aged 16 and 17 years, had come to the beach with a relative and were swept into the sea.

“There is no security here; you can’t spot a single policeman in the area. They just came, but were not here in the morning. I don’t think the children were given any warning because they would have not gone so deep into the sea if they had been warned,” said Colin d’Cruz, a relative of one of the victims.

The bodies of the two are yet to be recovered.

Meanwhile, vigilance along the beach has been beefed up after the incident.

“We need more lifeguards here and we also need a lot of equipment which we do not get,” said Krishna Waghela, a lifeguard.The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has not paid heed to my demands. I have been demanding for a year that there should be 100 lifeguards along the coastline, who will be deployed in two shifts of eight hours each so that everyone is taken care of,” said Congress MLA Ashok Jadhav.

“We want to provide people with the assistance such as tubes, bags and other things, which are useful for young children. There are just 3-4 lifeguards right now. Six or seven more are working for NGOs. But this is not sufficient and the BMC is answerable for all this,” he added. (ANI)